Bella Hadid will not be attending the Met Gala 2026, the model confirmed indirectly by liking a Friday Instagram post that criticized the event’s lead sponsor.
Hadid, who has attended the annual event five times, liked a post captioned, "I love the ICE out pins but you can’t wear them to the @jeffbezos backed Met Gala!" that amplified calls to avoid the gala because of its sponsorship.
The criticism centers on Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, who are listed as the lead sponsors and honorary co-chairs of the Met Gala 2026 and were reported to have paid $10 million to sponsor Monday night’s event. Activists have also made the dispute visible: organizers projected a call to "boycott the Bezos Met Gala" onto a building viewable from Bezos’s penthouse.
Meredith Lynch, who posted the Instagram message Hadid liked, has pushed the criticism into public view with a string of blunt comments aimed at stars and their publicists. Lynch wrote, "I love the ICE out pins but you can’t wear them to the @jeffbezos backed Met Gala!" and said she would be "dragging [stars] in perpetuity" for appearing on the red carpet with any signals she deems incompatible with the protest. Lynch added, "Jeff Bezos is part of the reason we’re in this f–king mess." and repeated, "Jeff Bezos supports this f–king mess."
Lynch did not stop at social pressure: she advised publicists to steer clients away from the gala. She framed the dilemma starkly in practical and moral terms, saying, "I know the funds from the Met Gala go to a good cause, but it is wild to me that this event is sponsored by Jeff Bezos, who has backed [President] Trump, who has slashed arts funding."
The controversy sits against the Met Gala’s announced theme for 2026, "Costume Art," and a sponsorship history that dates back to 2012, when Jeff Bezos first sponsored the gala via Amazon. Those facts complicate the simple trade-off between high-ticket fundraising and public optics, and they have already shaped who shows up: one star has publicly signaled she will not.
The dispute has provoked other high-profile moves. This month, Meryl Streep declined an offer to be a Met Gala co-chair, a decision that sparked chatter precisely because Streep "has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended." In explaining her reluctance, Streep said, "While she appreciates Vogue and Anna and her incredible imagination and stamina, it has never quite been her scene."
The friction is clear: organizers and beneficiaries of the Met Gala point to its fundraising role, while critics and activists focus on the politics of its backers and the messages celebrities send by attending. The online pressure is concrete, the monetary backing explicit, and the cultural signals are immediate — a combination that has already cost the event at least one red carpet appearance and prompted public refusals of formal association.
Yes — the pushback is real, and it is centered on the Bezos sponsorship. With a $10 million lead sponsorship, public projections urging a boycott, a widely shared social-media rebuke liked by Bella Hadid, and a co-chair offer turned down, the controversy has become a tangible test of anna wintour’s gala: whether it proceeds under fire or whether the roster of attendees shifts enough to alter the night’s optics and fundraising calculus.
